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SMSXXX10.1177/2056305119836778Social Media <span class="symbol" cstyle="Mathematical">+</span> SocietyMatias

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Social Media + Society

The Civic Labor of

April-June 2019: 1­–12
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/2056305119836778
https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119836778
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J. Nathan Matias

Abstract
Volunteer moderators create, support, and control public discourse for millions of people online, even as moderators’
uncompensated labor upholds platform funding models. What is the meaning of this work and who is it for? In this article,
I examine the meanings of volunteer moderation on the social news platform reddit. Scholarship on volunteer moderation
has viewed this work separately as digital labor for platforms, civic participation in communities, or oligarchy among other
moderators. In mixed-methods research sampled from over 52,000 subreddit communities and in over a dozen interviews,
I show how moderators adopt all of these frames as they develop and re-develop everyday meanings of moderation—facing
the platform, their communities, and other moderators alike. I also show how this civic notion of digital labor brings clarity to
a strike by moderators in July 2015. Volunteer governance remains a common approach to managing social relations, conflict,
and civil liberties online. Our ability to see how communities negotiate the meaning of moderation will shape our capacity to
address digital governance as a society.

Keywords
online behavior, digital labor, Internet governance, collective action, content moderation

Introduction The moderator class has become so detached from its mediating
role at Reddit that it no longer functions as a means of creating
On 2 July 2015, volunteer moderators of over 2,200 “subred- a harmonious community, let alone a profitable business. It has
dit” communities on the social news platform reddit effec- become an end in itself—a sort of moderatocracy.
tively went on strike. Moderators disabled their subreddits,
preventing millions of subscribers from accessing basic parts Are these moderators unpaid workers whose emotional
of the reddit website. The “reddit blackout,” as it became labor is exploited by platforms, are they facilitator citizens
known, choked the company from advertising revenue and upholding society’s collective communications, or are they
forced reddit to negotiate over moderators’ digital working oligarchs who coordinate to rule our online lives with limited
conditions. The company, already struggling with pressure accountability? Chen struggles to reconcile these views for
from racist and bullying groups that it had recently banned, good reason. When making sense of the work of moderation,
conceded to moderator demands within hours. Management scholars have tended to think primarily in one of three ways.
allocated resources to moderator needs, CEO Ellen Pao Scholarship on digital labor describes moderation as
resigned 1 week later, and within 2 months, the company had unwaged labor for commercial interests or free labor in peer
hired its first Chief Technical Officer, partly to improve the production communities like Wikipedia (Menking &
platform’s moderation software (Olanoff, 2015). Erickson, 2015; Postigo, 2003; Terranova, 2000). Legal the-
Even as the blackout surfaced anxieties about the respon- orists and computer scientists describe moderators as civic
sibilities of digital platforms to their volunteer workers, it leaders of online communities who build their own public
also led many to question the legitimacy of moderators’ gov- spheres (Kelty, 2005); much of this scholarship outlines
ernance role. Some moderators were censured or even
ejected by their subreddits for joining the blackout without Princeton University, USA
consulting their communities. Conversely, many moderators
were pressured to join the blackout through subreddit-wide Corresponding Author:
J. Nathan Matias, Center for Information Technology Policy and
votes and waves of private messages. Three weeks later, in Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540,
The New York Times magazine article, on the word “modera- USA.
tor,” Adrian Chen (2015) wrote, Email: jmatias@princeton.edu

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2 Social Media + Society

general strategies to structure governance work for fair and In this article, I examine how the meaning of moderation
functional communities at scale (Butler, Sproull, Kiesler, & is defined in the everyday boundary work carried out by vol-
Kraut, 2002; Grimmelmann, 2015). A third conversation unteer moderators on reddit as they negotiate the idea of
draws from the sociology of participation to consider the moderation. Boundary work, as described by Gieryn, is dis-
social structures of those who acquire and exercise modera- cursive activity that attempts to define the boundaries of a
tion power, finding common tendencies toward oligarchy profession or field, to support claims to authority and
that may be necessary for the survival of online communities resources (Gieryn, 1983). These boundaries are “drawn and
(Shaw & Hill, 2014; Zhu, Kraut, & Kittur, 2014). redrawn in flexible, historically changing and sometimes
Even as scholars debate the nature of moderation work, ambiguous ways” that reflect the ambivalences and strains
online communities routinely define what it means to be a within a given institution. In online platforms such as reddit,
moderator in everyday settings: they dispute over moderator volunteer moderators define and redefine what it means to be
decisions, recruit new moderators, participate in elections, a moderator in conversation with platform operators, their
investigate corruption, offer mentorship, and share peer sup- communities, and other moderators. To foreground the ways
port. In their everyday work, moderators must satisfy and that moderation is defined with all three parties, I introduce
explain themselves to all three parties identified in previous the idea of “civic labor” to describe authority that is defined
research, sometimes simultaneously: the platform, their through negotiations with these commercial, civic, and peer
communities, and their fellow moderators. The platform stakeholders.
operators must be satisfied that a moderator is appropriately
productive, communities must accept the legitimacy of a
moderator’s governance, and other moderators must also
Moderation Work
trust and support the moderator throughout their work. While online platforms do pay some people to enact their
Academic views of moderation work typically attend to content policies (Gillespie, 2018; Roberts, 2016), volunteer
only one of these stakeholders at a time. Digital labor moderators have played a fundamental role in social life
research on the role of moderation in a “profitable business” online for over 40 years. Many online social systems funda-
attends to the relationship between moderation work and mentally rely on volunteers, from librarians in 1970s
platform operators. Scholarship on the civic outcomes of Berkeley looking after local message-boards (Bruckman,
moderation emphasizes the relationship of moderators with 1998) to today’s Facebook group administrators (Kushin &
the publics they govern. Finally, studies on moderator social Kitchener, 2009), Wikipedia arbitrators (Menking &
structures draw attention to the ties and obligations of mod- Erickson, 2015), and reddit moderators. Although not all
erators to each other. work of fostering community is carried out by designated
The everyday work of defining volunteer moderation is moderators, people in these formal positions are founders,
central to the legitimacy and power of online governance; maintainers, content producers, promoters, policymakers,
however, scholars choose to describe it. Consider, for exam- and enforcers of policy across the social Internet (Butler
ple, the issue of compensation. Since moderators create and et al., 2002). On many platforms, moderators also manage
enact policy on acceptable speech, their work fundamentally autonomous and semi-autonomous moderation software that
shapes our digitally mediated social and political lives. work alongside them (Geiger & Ribes, 2010).
Moderators respond to conflict and harassment online, risks By delegating policy and governance power to modera-
that 40% of American adults report experiencing (Duggan, tors, platform operators reduce labor costs and limit their
2014). This valuable work is costly. Professional services regulatory liability for conduct on their service while also
reportedly charged between US$4 and US$25 cents per com- positioning themselves as champions of free expression and
ment in 2014 (Isaf, 2014). In 2008, America Online (AOL) cultural generativity (Gillespie, 2010). This governance
community leaders settled a class action lawsuit over unpaid work invites public scrutiny, which draws platforms into
wages for US$15 million (Kirchner, 2011). In recent years, debates about their responses to flagged material (Crawford
many news organizations have disabled public discussions, & Gillespie, 2014). However, when platforms delegate pol-
unable to afford moderation costs (Gupta, 2016). icy-making to their users, that scrutiny is faced instead by
Although platforms could afford moderation costs, the moderators, whose labor nonetheless upholds a platform’s
legitimacy of moderation is also affected by how communi- economic model.
ties interpret compensation models. On reddit, many com- On reddit, the evolution of moderation followed this lon-
munities see paid moderation as corruption, forcing out ger 40-year pattern. When reddit’s creators founded it in
moderators accused of receiving compensation or favors in 2005 to be “the front page of the Internet,” they developed an
exchange for their labor (Martinez, 2013). Because modera- infrastructure for sharing and promoting highly voted posts a
tion is governance as well as labor, its legitimacy depends on single, algorithmically curated page. After these algorithms
the beliefs of people other than the moderators who create regularly promoted pornography and other complicated, pos-
and enforce policies. Consequently, the processes that shape sibly illegal material, the platform created an alternative
the meaning of moderation also define its power. algorithmic space for “Not Safe For Work”(NSFW) material,
Matias 3

calling it a “subreddit” 1 month later (Huffman, 2006). Over offered to volunteers. As AOL grew, the company began to
the next 2 years, the company started dozens of new subred- formalize and control the relationship with their community
dits, mostly to separate conversations in different languages. leaders through communications, software, and compensa-
In January 2008, after its acquisition by Condé Nast and tion structures. No longer allowed the autonomy to imagine
10 months after introducing advertising, the company themselves as cultural gift-givers, the community leaders re-
launched “user-controlled subreddits.” Before then, users imagined themselves as mistreated employees and sued the
could join official company subreddits, reporting spam and company. Postigo describes their labor organizing as an
abuse directly to the company through a flagging system. effort to “stake out new occupational territory” for “commu-
Now they could create their own public and private subred- nity making” on the Internet, an example of people who were
dits, taking action themselves to “remove posts and ban “breaking out of the ‘social factory’” that Terranova put for-
users” (Huffman, 2007, 2008). By giving communities dele- ward (Postigo, 2003, 2009).
gated power to define their own governance, reddit was posi- Terranova and Postigo rightly draw attention to the co-
tioning itself as a platform and disclaiming responsibility for dependence of many online platforms with the substantial
how its users behaved. uncompensated labor that continues to support them.
Seven years later, reddit was one of the largest social plat- Community management is now more common as a paid
forms online. In the month before the reddit blackout, the position, but the majority of the labor continues to be unpaid.
company received over 160 million visitors,1 roughly half of Theories of digital labor offer clarity on the challenges of
the number of active Twitter users in the same period.2 To creating a “profitable business,” through volunteer labor, as
maintain social relations at that scale, reddit relied on nearly Adrian Chen phrased it in The New York Times.
150,000 moderator roles3 for over 52,000 monthly active In many ways, the reddit blackout defies explanation by
subreddits. prior theories of volunteer moderation. Moderators did not
attempt to stake out their work as an occupation, nor did they
demand compensation. Instead, they leveraged reddit’s
Moderation as Free Labor in the Social Factory of dependence on advertising to force the company to better
Internet Platforms meet their needs and those of their communities. As
Digital labor scholarship on the work of moderators fore- Centivanny has argued, the reddit blackout was a social
grounds their relationship with online platforms: theorizing movement focused on company policy, a moment where the
the role of moderators’ volunteer work within platform busi- dependence of a platform on volunteer labor was deployed to
ness models. Among examples in open source and free cul- achieve aims with as many civic dimensions as economic
ture, this scholarship also frequently refers to labor organizing ones (Centivany & Glushko, 2016).
by community leaders (essentially moderators) of AOL chat
rooms and other communities in the 1990s. Initially eager to
Moderation as Civic Participation
offer moderation work in exchange for discounts, credit, and
other perks, some of the 14,000 “community leads” came to Volunteer moderation is also the work of creating, maintain-
see their work as unpaid labor. Moderators filed a class ing, and defining “networked publics,” imagined collective
action lawsuit in 1999, prompting an inconclusive US spaces that “allow people to gather for social, cultural, and
Department of Labor investigation. The community leaders civic purposes” (boyd, 2010). While social platforms offer
eventually won US$15 million from AOL in a 2008 settle- technical infrastructures that constitute these publics, the
ment (Kirchner, 2011; Postigo, 2009). work of creating and maintaining these imagined spaces is
In an analysis of labor organizing by AOL moderators, carried out in many everyday ways by platform participants
Terranova points out that this freely given labor comprises an and moderators. Butler and colleagues call the work of mod-
arrangement where people carry out self-directed cultural eration “community maintenance,” drawing attention to the
and social work that produces the value extracted by plat- “communal challenge of developing and maintaining their
forms. For Terranova, the “free labor” of platform produc- existence.” They compare these communities to neighbor-
tion is something that is both “not financially rewarded [by hood societies, churches, and social movements. Writing
platforms] and willingly given [by users]” (Terranova, 2000). about the details of community work online, Butler and col-
In a series of articles on the AOL lawsuit, Postigo explores leagues draw attention to the benefits of affiliation and
the nature of the delicate symbiosis between platforms and social capital. Where Terranova and Postigo see labor in ser-
moderators by observing the factors that led this arrange- vice of platform business models, Butler and his colleagues
ment to collapse. Postigo observes that the gift of volunteer (2002) describe community maintenance as a service to the
time by AOL moderators was inspired by the “early Internet community itself. This view on the work of maintaining
community spirit” found in “hacker history” and in “the aca- communities is similar to what Boyte and Kari (1996) call
demic, collaborative efforts that shaped the Internet” in the “public work,” an activity of cooperative citizenship that
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Yet some also took on the role to “creates social as well as material culture” (p. 21). Aside
grow their technical skills or gain the discounts initially from the unique challenges of tending community software,
4 Social Media + Society

the mailing list moderators studied by Butler support their their positions. Anyone seeking the role must negotiate that
communities by recruiting newcomers, managing social position with other moderators as well as their community
dynamics, and participating in the community. and the platform. While moderators are powerful as a group,
As online harassment has grown in prominence, scholar- theories of oligarchy cannot explain the ways that platforms
ship on the role of moderators has drawn attention to their and communities do exert power in volunteer moderation, or
work to protect people’s capacities to participate in publics. the ways that moderators negotiate their work in relation to
Volunteers who respond to harassment create and manage those other stakeholders.
technical infrastructures such as “block bots” and modera-
tion bots to filter “harassment, incivility, hate speech, troll-
ing, and other related phenomena,” argues Stuart Geiger.
Standpoint and Methods
These volunteer efforts see moderation as “a civil rights My attempt to understand the meaning of volunteer modera-
issue of governance,” where marginalized groups deploy tion is grounded in my standpoint as a researcher who works
community infrastructure to claim spaces for conversation, directly with online communities and volunteer moderators
community, and support (Geiger, 2016). in studies that are independent from the technology industry
While these civic perspectives on moderation acknowl- (Matias & Mou, 2018). When developing this research, I
edge the role of platforms, they foreground the relationship needed ways to think about the power relations of volunteer
between moderators and the publics they are responsible for. moderation and how to negotiate that power with the stake-
The labor of moderators does sustain platform economies, holders involved. I began asking these questions after lead-
yet the work itself is most directly concerned with the spe- ing a team to study efforts by Women, Action, and the Media
cific communities they govern. When moderators are ques- (WAM!), a non-governmental organization (NGO) that was
tioned, as Adrian Chen did in The New York Times magazine, supporting people experiencing harassment on Twitter
it is often for their record at fostering “harmonious commu- (Matias et al., 2015). The volunteers who reviewed harass-
nity.” Yet theories of moderation as civic participation miss ment reports and advocated the cases to Twitter were criti-
important ways that moderators define their work in relation cized from multiple directions. Some argued that these
to platforms and other moderators, sometimes in ways that advocates represented a step backward for progress on online
conflict with the wishes of their communities. harassment, taking on labor that Twitter should be paying for
(Meyer, 2014). WAM! certainly managed its relationship
with Twitter to retain the privilege of supporting harassment
Moderation as Oligarchy receivers and maintain a public voice on the company’s poli-
Even as moderation work supports community, the power of cies. Others called our project a dangerous form of authori-
individual moderators is defined and managed by other mod- tarian censorship (Sullivan, 2014). The volunteers saw their
erators who gate-keep the process of taking on and maintain- work as a contribution to civic life in service to the people
ing the role. A third perspective on volunteer moderation who asked for their help. Which of these was true? In our
examines ways that this work is socially structured by other answers to ourselves and to these stakeholders, WAM! and
moderators and the interests of these moderators can diverge our research team needed to draw and redraw the boundaries
from the goals of their communities. of our work to manage public expectations and serve the
Early theories of leadership development in online com- public good we hoped we could provide.
munities imagined a “reader to leader” process where more My fieldwork with reddit moderators began at a time
active participants gain greater responsibility over time when I was trying understand the many-sided scrutiny that
(Preece & Shneiderman, 2009). However, longitudinal WAM!’s harassment reviewers had faced. WAM!’s respond-
research by Shaw and Hill has shown online communities to ers might be unpaid volunteers who took on a substantial
be much more like other voluntary organizations, where burden of emotional labor, but they were also a privately
“group of early members consolidate and exercise a monop- selected group with substantial power over others. Their
oly of power within the organization as their interests diverge work served platform operators who could remove them at
from the collective’s.” Across 683 Wikia wikis, they find will. They also served and governed users, who pressured
support for this “iron law of oligarchy,” showing that on them to share and justify their actions. As I spent time with
average, a small group does come to control the positions of reddit moderators, I watched them respond to similar ques-
formal authority as a wiki grows (Shaw & Hill, 2014). Yet tions from these multiple sides, a position many moderators
where Shaw and Hill see oligarchy, others see experience had been negotiating for years.
necessary for online communities to flourish. Also studying To study the discursive boundary work that reddit mod-
Wikia, Zhu and colleagues (2014) interpreted similar find- erators conduct with platforms, communities, and each other,
ings to argue that communities whose leaders also lead other I carried out participant observation, content analysis, inter-
communities are more likely to survive and grow. views, and trace data collection on the social news site reddit
In all these cases, experienced and powerful moderators over a 4-month period from June through September 2015,
control the process for others to gain and maintain with follow-up data collection through February 2016.
Matias 5

Collected content includes 10 years of public statements by moderator described the former moderator of a gender
the company, 90 published interviews by moderators of other minority subreddit as a “martyr, angry and whirling and
moderators, statements by over 200 subreddits that joined ready to give hell to anyone who dared to cross her or to
the blackout, over 150 subreddit discussions after concluding threaten her communities.” When adopting the figure of a
participation in the blackout, and over 100 discussions in defender, moderators draw attention to the moral and politi-
subreddits that declined to join the blackout.4 I also used the cal justifications for their exercise of power.
reddit API to conduct trace analysis of moderator roles in the Other moderators adopt language from hospitality or ser-
population of 52,735 active subreddits. Finally, I held semi- vice labor, describing themselves as “hosts” and “janitors.”
structured interviews with 14 moderators of subreddits of all These analogies de-politicize their role. Describing them-
sizes, sampled from communities both sides of the blackout. selves in this way, one moderator argued that “my subreddits
Interviewees included moderators of “NSFW” subreddits belong to my communities, I just happen to help out by
only available to users 18 years or older, as well as more cleaning up.” Reflecting on the accusations and complaints
widely accessible subreddits. Moderators of subreddits alleg- they receive, another moderator explained,
edly associated with hate speech declined to participate. I
coded interviews, blog posts, online discussions, and other It seems like it’s some sort of important position, while it’s
records by entering them into the Tinderbox information actually just janitoral work . . . the degree of accusations, insults,
management system, where I tagged, clustered, and con- abuse and unreasonable complaints from the politically
interested is extreme . . . it’s janitorial when you remove
structed qualitative evidence (Bernstein, 2003).
hundreds of comments that just say “kill yourself blackie.”
In this article, I focus on moments of tension and transi-
tion that brought debates over the meaning of moderation to
When I asked moderators whether the language of janitor
the fore, including disputes over moderator decisions, the
also implied a labor critique toward the reddit company, they
process of becoming a moderator, transitions of leadership,
disagreed. One described the language of janitor as “a
conflicts between communities, crises of legitimacy, the
response to complaints about conspiracies, censorship, etc”
work of starting new communities, debates over compensa-
rather their relationship to the company.
tion, and collective action during the reddit blackout of July
Many moderators describe themselves as connoisseurs
2015. Throughout points of tension and transition, modera-
when explaining their decisions about what to remove. In
tors carry out the work of defining this civic labor at the
one subreddit dedicated to shocking material, moderators
boundaries of their relationships with platforms, their com-
expressed disappointment over the lack of nuance and qual-
munities, and other moderators.
ity in submitters’ sense of the truly shocking. For example,
one moderator claimed that too many submitters are shocked
Disputing and Justifying Moderation by images of nudity, violent injury, or death; moderators con-
sidered these too commonplace for inclusion. These modera-
Decisions with Communities tors described themselves as taste-makers for their
When someone’s contribution to reddit is removed by mod- communities: “we are fucked up, but in a courtesy sniff kinda
erators, it can often come as a surprise. Since many partici- way that you’re ok with sharing with your friends.”
pants engage primarily with the platform’s aggregated feed, Some moderators respond to complaints of censorship by
they may not be aware that the posts they submit are subject drawing inspiration from the language of governance. These
to a subreddit’s community policies (Massanari, 2015). subreddits describe their decisions in terms of “policies” and
Responses to moderation decisions are often received sometimes produce transparency reports of moderation
through “modmail,” a shared inbox for each subreddit’s actions. One subreddit described its transparency report as a
moderators. Complaints often include moderation policy response to participant complaints, an effort “towards
debates, profanity, racist slurs, and threats of violence. improving user-moderator relations.”5 Their five-page report
Even when moderators ignore the complaints, these dis- offered an empirical response to common complaints
putes shape the language the moderators use to describe received by moderators of this 10 million subscriber commu-
their roles as dictators, martyrs, janitors, hosts, connois- nity. Several other large subreddits publish aggregated trans-
seurs, and policymakers. parency reports, with some sharing public logs of every
Some moderators describe themselves as “dictators,” action taken by the group’s moderators. By publishing trans-
arguing that the power they exercised needed no justifica- parency reports, moderators position themselves as civic
tion. In these communities, “the top mod makes all the deci- actors accountable to their communities. The reports deflect
sions, usually because s/he created the sub.” Those who criticism while also inviting evidence-based discussions of
complain are urged either to accept moderator power or to moderation practices.
stay away. The language of governance is also used by reddit par-
Moderators of subreddits dedicated to marginalized com- ticipants who investigate and analyze moderator behavior.
munities sometimes explain themselves as defenders. One One interviewee described investigating and “exposing” a
6 Social Media + Society

moderator for encouraging reddit users to share sexual pho- While moderator teams sometimes take final responsibil-
tographs of minors. The investigators organized a press ity for selecting new moderators—what Shaw and Hill call
campaign to pressure the company, who then shut down the oligarchy—some subreddits open the final selection to sub-
subreddit involved (Morris, 2011). In another case, partici- scribers. The reddit platform doesn’t support ballots, so sub-
pants accused a large technology subreddit’s moderators of reddits have developed their own voting systems. Speaking
censoring political discussions. To support these accusa- about elections in a community for people from marginalized
tions, one person conducted data analysis of the subreddit’s groups in the United States, a moderator explained, “I got
history, creating charts that showed a sharp cutoff in discus- one ballot, just like every one else.” Yet especially with elec-
sions of surveillance and other political topics. The mod- tions, moderators still felt responsible to filter possible nomi-
erators’ accusers argued that the subreddit lacked nees lest the wrong person become elected. The same
“accountability” and “transparency.” After the reddit plat- moderator explained that public opinion wasn’t appropriate
form sanctioned the subreddit amid substantial interna- for nominating candidates since it risked reinforcing preju-
tional press coverage, the moderators also invoked the dice: “lots of people who can’t be bigots so much anymore
language of governance, making a formal public statement [due to social pressure] have found that they can still target
that “the mods directly responsible for this system are no [minority group] and nobody seems to mind.”
longer a part of the team and the new team is committed to If voting software supplies infrastructure for democratic
maintaining a transparent style of moderation.” (BBC, notions of moderation, the job board for finding experienced
2014; Collier, 2014). moderators outside of a community offers infrastructure for
more oligarchic forms of leadership. This subreddit pub-
Internships, Applications, and Elections: lishes moderation opportunities alongside “offers to mod.”
Postings routinely offer arguments on the nature of modera-
Becoming a Moderator on reddit tion work, such as the disinterested approach to moderation
The practical work of recruiting and choosing new modera- offered in one job listing for a community with frequent
tors also requires people to define what it means to be a conflicts:
moderator. Since a subreddit’s current moderators control
the reddit software’s process of appointing new modera- I’m looking for an impartial moderator, who doesn’t belong to
tors, would-be moderators must justify themselves and [organization], and who doesn’t hold a specific view on it. Must
their ideas of the work to their would-be peers. Likewise, have:
current moderators invest substantial labor into the work of
• been on reddit for at least 2 years
admitting new moderators. At these moments of transition,
democratic, oligarchic, and professional notions of moder- • moderating experience
ator work come into tension as subreddits negotiate who
should select the leaders and what qualities they should The sub is an open platform to discuss [topic], but prejudiced
demonstrate. comments aren’t allowed.
Among those interviewed, moderators gained their posi-
tions through a wide range of means. One was added by a Soon after the primary moderator posted this message,
school friend who needed extra help. Others were invited to community members, who had noticed the listing, added
be moderators after demonstrating substantial participation objections: “Seriously? We have posted so many requests for
in the subreddit’s affairs. One was made a moderator in mods to that sub. We have even posted solutions that result in
appreciation of their role to expose the scandal over sexual a very balanced 3 party system.” These community members
images of minors. Some were recruited for their expertise at accused the poster of delinquency and argued strongly
operating the reddit platform software. Yet many subreddits against the idea of disinterested, objective moderation:
also operate formal structures for adding moderators, sys- “Anyone without knowledge on the subject will be unable to
tems that draw from the language of the workplace and the effectively moderate the sub.” After an extended discussion,
public sector. the moderator accepted their proposal, and the “three party
Many subreddits hold a formal application process for system” was still in place over 1 year later.
becoming a moderator. In the simplest versions, interested Even democratic subreddits emphasize previous experi-
parties fill out an interview form, noting their time zone ence when selecting moderators, leading many to seek and
and availability, describing their moderation experience, tout their moderation “rѐsumѐ.” Since a medium-to-large
listing their skills, and explaining their reasons for apply- subreddit is unlikely to accept applicants with limited experi-
ing. One popular subreddit received 600 applications in ence, some subreddits grow their labor pool by offering
one recruitment effort, identified a shortlist of 60 appli- “internships” and other entry-level moderation opportuni-
cants to interview, and chose from the shortlist. The pro- ties. /r/SubredditOfTheDay, which publishes original con-
cess from call to selection can take from weeks to over a tent every day, offers a 2-month internship for people seeking
month. moderation opportunities. Interns agree to write six original
Matias 7

posts that feature interviews with the moderation teams of 2012). In response, the reddit platform banned the user and
other subreddits. Those who finish the internship period are added a rule against third party compensation. Moderators
made full moderators, and they also gain opportunities to also receive substantial scrutiny and criticism from their
moderate other subreddits. communities for alleged “corruption.”
The process of choosing moderators is one of the most In one case, someone sent messages on the reddit plat-
powerful ways to define the meaning of moderation and form to “a few dozen” moderators, offering compensation
acculturate moderators to that meaning. Even during attempts for help promoting their content. When some moderators
at democracy or oligarchy, the other stakeholders still shape reported the offer to reddit, employees investigated the pri-
this acculturation through the platform software, through vate messages of everyone who received the offer. When the
public pressure, or through the power that moderators have employees noticed that some moderators had responded pos-
over the process. itively, the company banned their accounts, including mod-
erators of some of the platform’s largest, most popular NSFW
subreddits (Martinez, 2013). In 2015, a large gaming com-
Crises in Legitimacy and the Removal
pany asked moderators to remove links to material that could
of Moderators not legally be published, offering moderators early access to
In technical terms, only two parties can remove a moderator an upcoming Star Wars game in exchange for their help.
from their position on reddit. Platform employees, known as When one moderator reported the relationship to reddit
“admins,” occasionally remove moderators if they are con- employees, the others removed the moderator for a time,
vinced that the moderator was inactive or abusing their until they themselves were banned by reddit for accepting a
power. Moderators with greater seniority also possess the “bribe.” A reddit representative explained that the gaming
power to remove those within the same community who company should have used alternative channels to address
were appointed more recently. illegally shared material (Khan, 2015). In another case, a
In an interview, one moderator described a “coup attempt” mobile phone manufacturer offered “perks” to moderators of
by moderators who systematically removed others who dis- a subreddit that commonly discussed their products. In
agreed with their political views. Someone noticed the exchange, the company asked that its employees be made
attempt in time and reinstated the ejected moderators. In moderators. To protect themselves from community disap-
another case, the sibling of someone who moderated a 30,000 proval or platform intervention, moderators reported the
subscriber group compromised their reddit account, took request to reddit and posted the offending messages for dis-
charge of the subreddit, and only restored it upon receiving cussion by their community (Farrell, 2015).
threats of violence. Many moderators, especially those of In interviews, moderators were insistent that they did not
large or contentious subreddits, pay close attention to their seek compensation, arguing that news articles that focused
personal information security to protect against such take- on their unpaid status failed to understand the nature of their
overs. Platform employees will also occasionally take action work. One interviewee brought up the AOL community
to restore a subreddit’s moderators when asked. leader program, arguing that reddit moderators were differ-
Moderators are more commonly removed for failing to ent because they weren’t managed as closely as the AOL vol-
perform their role. In some cases, would-be moderators unteers. This independence was important to many
appeal to the platform, who offer a process for requesting moderators, including one who claimed, “I don’t think I
moderation of “inactive” subreddits. In other cases, a mod- work for reddit. I run communities and reddit is the tool I use
erator loses their legitimacy to govern—as in the case of the to do that.” Yet at the time of the reddit blackout, moderators
technology moderators that were removing all conversations also felt ignored by the company behind these “tools.” One
about surveillance. In these cases, community participants explained that “it doesn’t help when the site you are on
sometimes pursue the person they mistrust, incessantly doesn’t appreciate/recognize/care about the cumulative thou-
mocking their pronouncements and questioning their deci- sands and thousands of hours the mods put in to make their
sions. Such cases tend to conclude with a post from the mod- site usable.”
erator announcing their resignation, or a post from other
moderators announcing that the offending moderator has
been removed. Starting Subreddits and Governing
Moderator Networks
Moderator Compensation and While some new subreddits are created to support a pre-
existing community, many moderators describe “founding” a
Corruption
subreddit and developing a growing community over time.
In 2012, a moderator of three of the largest subreddits posted Yet even the work of creating new subreddits requires man-
links to an online news outlet after being hired as a social aging the expectations of platform operators, moderators,
media advisor by the publisher’s marketing firm (Morris, and community participants. In interviews, I observed these
8 Social Media + Society

negotiations among relationship-themed subreddits and net- Acknowledeging Moderators’ Position

works of subreddits. With Platform, Community, and Other
Relationship subreddits offer listings of people who are
Moderators
looking for conversations, penpals, and relationships,
sometimes sexual, but often not. When one moderator Two regularly shared comic strips by former moderator
started a group for users of a mobile messaging system, Daniel Allen remark directly on the work that moderators
their goal was to help newcomers on the messaging plat- must do to manage their relationships with their communi-
form “find more people to chat with,” whatever age. As the ties, other moderators, and the reddit platform. The first “life
subreddit grew, participants continued to post requests for of a mod” comic strip presents moderators as people who
relationships and conversations that could be illegal for carry out a wide range of community care for little apprecia-
minors. These “dirty” relationship requests also put the tion. In the comic, moderators are janitors, referees, police,
subreddit at risk of intervention from reddit employees. educators, and artists (Figure 1). The second presents the
Rather than designate the subreddit “NSFW,” which would “Life of a Secret Cabal Mod,” drawing attention to the accu-
limit minors from accessing the group, the moderator cre- sations of oligarchy that moderators receive. The heading of
ated a parallel subreddit for “dirty” relationship matching. each panel includes a common accusation toward modera-
By splitting the conversation, the moderator found a way to tors. The illustration beneath each heading offers an alterna-
meet community expectations while also protecting the pri- tive explanation for the behavior that attracts accusation. For
mary subreddit from platform intervention. When asked example, when one moderator helps another learn to remove
why they moderated a community that wasn’t safe for chil- what they see as hate speech, they could be accused of con-
dren, the moderator explained that “I never intended to spiring to silence dissent. When platform employees share
moderate a NSFW subreddit. It blew me away the commu- software updates and moderators pass on community com-
nity want for it.” plaints to the company, they might also be accused of collu-
Creators of new subreddits also work to comply with the sion (Figure 2). By drawing attention to the complicated
expectations of other moderators, especially if they seek to negotiations that moderators conduct in multiple directions,
join a subreddit “network.” These networks are jointly man- Allen’s comics themselves make a case for how those parties
aged collections of subreddits that share moderators and a should see moderators.
common governance structure. Some networks specialize in
a particular kind of content. Several offer inspiring general-
interest photography; others share celebrity pornography. Civic Labor in the Reddit Blackout
Some networks adopt a structure akin to city states. To join Scholars of moderation work have rightly identified the
the network, a moderator must grow their subreddit to a min- stakeholders that moderators face as they negotiate the mean-
imum size, institute a set of network-designated policies, and ing of the work. This “civic labor” requires moderators to
convince a “champion” within the network to advocate for serve three masters with whom they negotiate the idea of
their inclusion. These champions also help new network moderation: the platform, reddit participants, and other mod-
members comply with the network’s requirements. New sub- erators. Moderators differ in the pressure they receive from
reddits are inducted by vote from the moderators. At the time these parties and the weight they give them. Some face fur-
of writing, the largest two networks included 169 and 117 ther stakeholders outside the platform. Yet attempts to make
constituent subreddits, although networks also occur at sense of moderation by focusing on any one of these rela-
smaller scales. tionships can bring the other actors out of focus. These limi-
One network stopped accepting new subreddits after par- tations become apparent when attempting to make sense of
ticipants in a newly added subreddit began “doxing” reddit the reddit blackout, which was not a labor dispute, not always
users—a practice of publishing the addresses and phone a collective action from communities, and not entirely a
numbers of people they disliked: coordinated action by a bloc of organized moderators seek-
ing to consolidate power. All three of these interlocutors in
one time we added a sub, vetted them, once we approved them,
they started posting information on reddit users, so it looked like the boundary work of moderators are apparent in prior
[the network] had approved doxxing, which was one of the two research on the factors that predicted a subreddit’s chance of
things that could get us banned [by the company]. joining the blackout. Those models show that community-
related factors as well as factors in the relations between
Rather than risk reprisals from the platform operator, the moderators predicted the likelihood of a subreddit to put
network dissociated itself from the offending subreddit and pressure on the company (Matias, 2016). Across the popula-
halted all new applications. To address future risks, they tion of subreddits, moderators found the decision thrust upon
required all groups to accept a lead moderator from the net- them. Their actions represent the outcomes of unique nego-
work’s central leadership, to keep “everyone pointed in the tiations with the three parties who together bring their work
same direction.” into being.
Matias 9

Figure 1. “Life of a Mod” comic by former moderator Daniel Allen, /u/solidwhetstone.

support to moderators in some of the site’s most popular dis-

cussions: live question-answer sessions with notable people,
called Ask-Me-Anything threads (Isaac, 2015). Moderators
of the /r/IamA subreddit described being caught off guard
while in the middle of a live Q&A. When they disabled their
subreddit to decide their response (Lynch & Swearingen,
2015), other moderators of large subreddits took note. To
these observers, the company’s failure to coordinate the tran-
sition with moderators was another sign of its neglect of
moderator needs. Moderators had already been attempting to
convince the company to improve moderator software and
increase its coordination with moderators. In interviews,
moderators explained that moderators of the largest groups
had previously dismissed the idea of blacking out. But “after
she was fired, the idea came up again, [and] no one was
really against it.” These moderators described the blackout
as a tactic that might give greater leverage to company
employees who routinely advocated for moderator interests.
When other moderators observed the behavior of these large
groups, many joined the blackout, leaving messages on their
subreddits expressing “solidarity” for moderators affected by
the blackout.
Figure 2. Details from “Life of a Secret Cabal Mod” comic by Even as moderators discussed the blackout with each
former moderator Daniel Allen, /u/solidwhetstone. other, they also negotiated pressures from their communities
over the decision to join the blackout. In interviews, modera-
tors described receiving large volumes of private messages
Deciding to Join the Blackout from participants that urged them toward or against the
The reddit blackout was precipitated when the company dis- blackout. In response, many posted discussion threads ask-
missed an employee who had consistently offered direct ing for community opinions or announcing their decisions.
10 Social Media + Society

In one post, a moderator apologized for “the inconvenience about the blackout decision. Which is silly. If you were upset
of going dark” and explained, why didn’t you raise your concerns?” one wrote. In other
cases, moderators assigned responsibility to a single modera-
I did get messages from people. The more I watched and saw tor acting alone. Sometimes, they offered statements that
more and more subs going down, I figured it was worth sending they removed the person from the moderation team or
a message [to the platform]. We had kind of a mod vote and encouraged them to resign.
decided to black out.
In many of these discussions, moderators expressed sup-
port for the blackout, explained the reasons one might join
Community interests were considered in many moderator
the protest, and also apologized to their communities. These
decisions. One group of gaming-related subreddits, whose
statements positioned moderators as supporters of the black-
moderators see it as an “island just barely within reddit” con-
out while also defending themselves from community cri-
cluded that joining the blackout would “punish our users
tiques. One recipe-sharing subreddit moderator took a
who don’t know or don’t care about reddits politics.” Yet
compromise position by briefly joining the blackout and then
they still faced pressure from many their community to join
re-opening in advance of 4 July US Independence Day par-
the blackout: “we eventually released the statement after we
ties. They expressed their “full support” for the other mod-
received dozens of modmails and posts on both subreddits.”
erators, drew attention to an overwhelming community vote
Some moderators invited their communities to vote on
to blackout, and then wrote an apology: “we are deeply sorry
participation in the blackout. In many cases, moderators fol-
for the outage. Things need to change on reddit, and this was
lowed the results of community votes. Yet networks of mod-
our best way to let them know our demands.”
erators did not always agree with their communities. In one
subreddit in a subreddit network, one moderator held a vote
that came out in favor of the blackout. The rest of the net- Conclusion: Civic Labor Online
work stayed active; moderators more central to the network While the details of volunteer moderation are always under
described the vote as a “rogue faction” and ignored it. negotiation, the negotiations surrounding this civic labor
Instead, they issued a proclamation that the entire network always face platform operators, community participants, and
would stay out of the protest. Elsewhere, one moderator other moderators. Scholarly accounts of moderation are right
described their community vote as a way to distract those to draw attention to these different stakeholders, but a clearer
who were clamoring for the blackout, gaining time for mod- account of moderation work should attend to all three at
erators to reach a collective decision. Many moderators and once, just as moderators must always do. All three forces
participants questioned the legitimacy of the votes that did acculturate a moderator to their ever-changing position, from
occur, guessing that the results might be skewed by influxes the application process to the moment they step down or are
of reddit users beyond their community who wanted to influ- removed.
ence a community’s decision. From the most common dispute over a single comment
Across these situations, moderators faced the same three removal to collective actions that make international news,
questions: what would their actions say to the platform, to the meaning of moderation is described in all three ways as
other moderators, and to their communities? The effect of the people define and redefine the boundaries of moderation.
blackout on reddit’s civic labor would not be limited to their Calling this work civic labor allows us to acknowledge the
relationship with the company—it would affect every other complex and contingent nature of volunteer moderation
relationship in their everyday moderation work. throughout the conversations that draw and redraw its mean-
ing together with platforms, the public, and moderators
themselves.
Defending Decisions After the Blackout
These stakeholders are not an exclusive list. For example,
Moderators also faced the consequences of their decisions during the reddit blackout, two reddit moderators published
once the blackout concluded. When the platform operators a New York Times opinion article in the attempt to retain their
quickly ceded to moderator demands, many declared victory. celebrity guests and large public audience (Lynch &
Community and moderator reactions were more complex. Swearingen, 2015). Yet I argue, based on my fieldwork, that
While some subreddits systematically removed any mention negotiations with these three stakeholders are central to any
of the blackout, it was more common for moderators to post discussion of volunteer governance online.
a discussion explaining what had happened. Especially for This civic labor has been a recurring pattern in a 40-year
subreddits that were disabled for the entire weekend, this history of volunteers being invited, elected, and chosen into
conversation could be heated. Only a small number of par- governance positions online. Nor is it unique to for-profit
ticipants might notice a vote called at the moment of deci- platform; moderators of non-profit platforms such as
sion; many more would feel the effects of a blacked-out Wikipedia face a similar set of stakeholders to maintain their
community. At these moments, moderators often defended roles, as do the journalists involved in fact-checking news on
themselves by referring to these votes. “You’re all upset Facebook (Ananny, 2018).
Matias 11

It is possible that civic labor may also be found beyond BBC (2014). Reddit downgrades technology community after
online platforms: in debates over the unionization of school censorship. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com
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governance work of scholarly peer review. In all these cases,
boyd, d. (2010). Social network sites as networked publics:
volunteers do more than just the work associated with their Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Networked self:
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social lives, the sense we make of this work will shape our University Press.
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tecting public safety, managing our civil liberties, and Haynes & J. R. Holmevik (Eds.), High wired: On the design,
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Acknowledgements technologically-supported work (pp. 171–194). Hoboken, NJ:
This work was undertaken while I was a summer intern at Microsoft Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Research. I owe special thanks to the hundreds of reddit users who Centivany, A., & Glushko, B. (2016). “Popcorn tastes good”:
participated in this research. I am also deeply grateful to Tarleton Participatory policymaking and Reddit’s. In Proceedings of the
Gillespie and Mary Gray for offering mentorship and feedback 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems
throughout this research, as well as the Oxford Internet Institute (CHI’16, pp. 1126–1137). New York, NY: ACM.
brownbag seminar, who offered generous feedback on an early ver- Chen, A. (2015). When the Internets moderators are anything but.
sion of this argument. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes
.com/2015/07/26/magazine/when-the-internets-moderators
Declaration of Conflicting Interests -are-anything-but.html
Collier, K. (2014) Reddit’s technology has a secret list of about 50
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect words you can’t use in headlines. The Daily Dot. Retrieved
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. from https://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-technology
-banned-words/
Funding Crawford, K., & Gillespie, T. L. (2014). What is a Flag for? Social
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support media reporting tools and the vocabulary of complaint. New
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This Media & Society, 18, 410–428.
research was funded as part of an internship at Microsoft Research. Duggan, M. (2014). Online harassment. Retrieved from http://
www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/
Notes Farrell, N. (2015). HTC tried to bribe a Reddit moderator and
got burned . . . hard. Retrieved from https://medium.com
1. http://web.archive.org/web/20150703012219/http://www
/@notarobot/htc-tried-to-bribe-a-reddit-moderator-and-got
.reddit.com/about (accessed 3 July 2015)
-burned-hard-b82f68446fae
2. http://web.archive.org/web/20150704143845/https://about
Geiger, R. S. (2016). Bot-based collective blocklists in Twitter:
.twitter.com/company (accessed 4 July 2015)
The counterpublic moderation of harassment in a networked
3. Many accounts have multiple moderator positions, and some
public space. Information, Communication & Society, 19,
use “throwaway accounts” and “alts” on reddit (Leavitt, 2015).
787–803.
While this number is based on an empirical analysis I con-
Geiger, R. S., & Ribes, D. (2010). The work of sustaining order
ducted in June 2015, the number of accounts may be greater
in Wikipedia: The banning of a vandal. In Proceedings of the
than the number of people involved.
2010 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative
4. Quotations from subreddit discussions have been obfuscated
work (pp. 117–126). New York, NY: ACM.
to protect participant privacy.
Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of sci-
5. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/43g15s/first
ence from non-science: Strains and interests in professional
_transparency_report_for_rscience/
ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review, 48,
781–795.
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Author Biography
Matias, J. N. (2016). Going dark: Social factors in collective action
against platform operators in the Reddit blackout. In Proceedings J. Nathan Matias organizes citizen behavioral science for a safer,
of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing sys- fairer, more understanding Internet. He studies digital governance
tems (CHI’16, pp. 1138–1151). New York, NY: ACM. and behavior change in groups and networks shaped by algorithms.
Matias, J. N., Johnson, A., Boesel, W. E., Keegan, B., Friedman, J., Nathan is an associate research scholar at Princeton University in
& DeTar, C. (2015). Reporting, reviewing, and responding to psychology, the Center for Information Technology Policy, and
harassment on Twitter. arXiv. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org sociology. He is also a visiting scholar at the MIT Center for Civic
/abs/1505.03359 Media.